MILLENNIUM

in Christian theology, the 1,000-year period when Jesus Christ will return and establish his kingdom on Earth. Among early Christians the idea of millennialism, or millenarianism, derived chiefly from Jewish eschatological expectations and usually implied the nearness of the triumph of Christians over the world. The doctrine of the millennium is clearly present in the New Testament only in Rev. 20. According to the account of the vision there, Satan was bound and thrown into a pit for 1,000 years. Martyrs were resurrected and reigned with Christ for the millennium. At the end of the period, Satan was loosed for a time to deceive the nations, but he was subsequently defeated. All the dead were then gathered for the final judgment. Many different interpretations of the millennium have been given. Those Christians who believe that the Second Coming of Christ will begin the 1,000-year period of righteousness in the world have been called premillennialists. Others, known as postmillennialists, believe that eventually Christianity will be accepted throughout the world, and a 1,000-year period of Christian righteousness will be climaxed by the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment. The more general use of the term to include expectations of material benefits to be enjoyed on earth in the near future means that a number of early Christian writers, especially those close to Jewish Christianity, can be called millenarians. Among such writers are the author of the Epistle of Barnabas, Papias, Justin, Irenaeus, and the Jewish-Christian Gnostic Cerinthus. Many Christians first became aware of the dangers of this kind of doctrine only with the rise of the movement known as Montanism. The Montanists believed that the heavenly Jerusalem would soon be manifested in Phrygia and that their leader was the Paraclete promised in the Gospel of John. At the same time, more orthodox teachers continued to share a similar hope; Hippolytus tells of bishops in Syria and Pontus who led their flocks out into the desert to await Christ's coming. By the time of the triumph of the church in the reign of Constantine such hopes were on the wane. The great Western theologian Augustine was a millenarian early in his career, but he later changed his views. At the Council of Ephesus (431) millenarian views were not condemned; but they were mentioned only to be ignored. In later times they arose sporadically when they could be used against the authority of the church; thus they flourished among spiritual enthusiasts during the Middle Ages and particularly at the time of the Reformation, when social and religious ferment worked together, especially among the various groups loosely denominated Anabaptist. The more conservative Reformers shared the Catholic view of the coming of Christ as primarily past rather than future, thus identifying the Kingdom of God on earth with the church, even though such an identification was hardly ever regarded as complete. Throughout later Western history, the appeal of millennialism has tended to resurge in times of great social change or crisis. Sects arising out of the industrialization of the West include the Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons).